Foreign & International Blog

(photograph courtesy Yale Law School)

In a January 18, 2011, New York Times op-ed column, David Brooks declared, “Amy Chua is a Wimp.” I have worked with Amy Chua on several occasions and want to proclaim resoundingly and emphatically that Amy Chua is not a wimp!

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(image courtesy Amazon.com)

Brooks was responding to Professor Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and her unwillingness to let her daughters go on sleepovers. He thinks she is afraid to have her daughters confront challenging social situations. As a parent of two daughters, this writer suggest that Amy places a lesser value on the popularity of her children than do many Western parents. In his view, Amy was just wise before her age. In any event, Louisa, the younger daughter (and presumably Sophia, the elder, as well) has met challenging social situations, in that she is concertmaster for a prestigious youth orchestra; and both girls were compelled to deal with the social dynamics of a classroom in an elite private school.

(photograph courtesy The Wall Street Journal: Erin Patrice O'Brien)

After writing two books applying macro analyses, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability and Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance -- and Why They Fall, Amy has given us an intimate portrayal of the family life of a Yale Law faculty couple for which we are most appreciative.  Amy gives us a glimpse of not only her family but also of her marvelous Samoyeds which not only could lie on her to keep her warm at night in this miserable New Haven winter but actually compel her to exercise—they run her!

My critique has nothing to do with her parenting style, for the highest honor this writer has received is to have finished twenty-third on the 1962 state examination for Latin IV (Vergil) in the state of Indiana, but his Mother had her “Tiger” moments, even though she was from Arkansas. Rather Amy fails to address the “nature” component in the nature-nurture controversy.  Far before they received the gift of her tough love parenting, they were genetically blessed. How many kids have two law professors for parents, and even more exceptional, how many have two Yale law professors for parents -- two Yale law professors who have published books simultaneously. Their father, Jed Rubenfeld, has just published his second novel, The Death Instinct. You know the girls are exceptional, because Amy reveals in her epilogue (Coda) that she consulted with them, and they approved of her writing about them.

(photograph courtesy The Guardian: by Lorenzo Ciniglio)

A remaining question I have is whether Chinese American parenting can yield different outcomes. What happens if altruism, rather than music, were the parents’ highest value? Could they produce another Saint Francis or a Dorothy Day using Amy’s parenting techniques?

The purpose of this blog posting is not to announce the publishing of the Battle Hymn. The book has been widely touted from the Today Show (January 11th) to this week’s cover of Time (January 31st), and Amy has even been interviewed by the Yale Daily News (January 18th).

(photograph courtesy Time Magazine)

Rather it is to encourage you to pick up the book and read it. It is a delightful, quick read, and affords a great break from reading substantive law. Amy’s wry wit makes it go down like chocolate!

                                                                                                        -----Daniel Wade

The Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey make up the Channel Islands located in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy, France.  They are subject to the British Crown but not part of the United Kingdom.  They are members of the European Economic Community but not part of the European Union.

Jerseylaw.je is the official website of the Jersey Legal Information Board (JLIB).  The website contains one of the most comprehensive collections of legal material of any small jurisdiction and includes all Laws in Force and Revised Laws, the Jersey Law Reports (as well as the Jersey Judgments), the Unreported Judgments of the Jersey courts from 1997 to date, and Practice Directions of the Royal Court. You will also find the current version of the Royal Court Rules 2004, the Jersey and Guernsey Law Review and a student section. Some Norman customary law and civil law texts are also available.

Wojciech Jaruzelski

Martial law in Poland (Polish: Stan wojenny w Polsce, “the state of war”) refers to the period of time from December 13, 1981 to July 22, 1983, when the authoritarian government of the People’s Republic of Poland drastically restricted normal life by introducing martial law in an attempt to crush political opposition to it. Thousands of opposition activists were interned without charge and as many as 100 people were killed. Although martial law was lifted in 1983, many of the political prisoners were not released until the general amnesty in 1986. from Wikipedia

Wojciech Jaruzelski, commander-in-chief of the communist Polish People’s Army, announces introduction on martial law in Poland. Sunday morning, December 13, 1981.

TRANSLATION: The atmosphere of endless conflict, misunderstanding, hatred sows mental havoc. The chaos and demoralization took the size of the disaster. History will judge our actions. We need to tie hands of troublemakers. The Council of State in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, introduced martial law throughout the country, today at midnight. We are only a drop in the stream of Polish history. Polish-Soviet alliance is and will remain the cornerstone of the Polish raison d’etat. I appeal to you officers of Civic Militia and Security Service – guard the state from the enemy. The hour of ordeal has come.

Reisman Festschrift Arrives

In the waning days of 2010, the festschrift of Professor W. Michael Reisman, Myres S. McDougal Professor of International Law at Yale Law School,  was published and became a notable addition to the Yale Law Library collection. Looking to the Future: Essays on International Law in Honor of W. Michael Reisman, edited by Mahnoush H. Arsanjani, Jacob Katz Cogan, Robert D. Sloane, and Siegfried Wiessner (Leiden: Nijhoff: 2011) is a monumental introduction of some 1100 pages to the distinguished career of Professor Reisman who became a professor in the Yale Law School in 1969 after working at Yale with Professors Myres S. McDougal and Harold D. Lasswell and earning his LL.M. (1964) and J.S.D.(1965).

The editorial introduction briefly describes Professor Reisman’s educational background and lays out how his writings (26 books, 248 articles, and myriad book reviews) has developed the New Haven School, or policy-oriented jurisprudence, established by his mentors. (See, W. Michael Reisman, Siegfried Wiessner, and Andrew R. Willard, The New Haven School: A Brief Introduction,  32 YALE J. INT’L L. 575 (2007) ).

The introduction takes pains to emphasize that the Professor Reisman is not only a scholar, but also very much a practitioner, serving as an arbitrator, as a member and later Chair of the Inter-American Commissioner of Human Rights, as an expert witness, and as an advocate before several international tribunals.

The introduction also provides other salient and very useful information. It informs us that Professor Reisman writes fiction, “the occasional novel or collection of short stories,” e.g., the novel, Spiritual Exercise, under the pseudonym Deborah Shai (Frederick, MD:PublishAmerica, 2004).  The introduction points us to Professor Reisman’s singular work on microlegal systems, Law in Brief Encounters. Finally, it promises that Professor Reisman’s 2007 lectures on public international law will be soon published under the title International Law in the 21st Century: The Quest for World Order and Human Dignity and announces his latest book, Stopping Wars and Making Peace: Studies in International Intervention co-authored with Kristen Eichensehr (Leiden: Nijhoff, 2009).

The festschrift consists of 52 essays written by the world’s leading scholars of international law, many of whom are Professor Reisman’s students. The essays are divided into six parts: W. Michael Reisman, the Man; Theory about Making and Applying Law; Making and Applying Human Rights Law; Making and Applying Investment and Trade Law; Making and Applying Law for the Resources of the Planet, Making and Applying Law to the Use of Force; and Making and Applying Law by International Tribunals. I think all the authors would agree with  the statement of Roslyn Higgins, former President of the International Court of Justice, “It is clear that we all regard Michael Reisman as a phenomenon.”